Unidad I - AC & Tertium Comparationis - Paris PDF

Anlsisis Contrastivo 2015
Notas Unidad 1
Pars, Luis
Contrastive Analysis 2012
Departamento de Ingls
Traductorado bilinge espaol-ingls
Notes for Unit 1
Instructors: Luis Pars and Viviana Bosio
Author: L. Pars
Unit 1part A
0.Introduction
This course should give you the tools to build detailed representations of the meaning and formal structure of any
linguistic symbol so that, when applied to the description of English and Spanish, these representations should be able
to unfold the full complexities underlying each language. An insightful contrast between two symbols of the two
languages can be carried out only after a thorough description.
We shall attempt to contrast two languages: English and Spanish. Is it possible? What are the conditions that
make this comparison fruitful? What is the nature of human languages that allow them to be contrasted? What is the
purpose of contrasting two languages? Obviously English and Spanish are the tools that speakers of each community
use to communicate and represent and express information of any sort. Ok, that might characterized broadly the main
recognizable functions of languages but we still need to ask ourselves what they are, namely, what are the main
properties of them. One central property is that every language is a system; hence, if two languages are contrasted, the
two systems are supposed to be superimposed. This superimposition never renders a perfect match. Some parts of a
system may couple with parts of the other system but some parts are likely to show mismatches. Furthermore, each
unit is connected to the whole system so that if the systems don`t match perfectly even the contrast between single
units cannot be completely done. That is, we select and isolate two units from the system and analyze their contrast in
isolation. However, each unit belongs to a system, their sense is necessarily related to a network of words and syntactic
constructions and/or expressions and this relation is relevant to its meaning. This relational meaning -the articulation
that shows how this piece is integrated to the system- is lost in isolation.
This statement is necessary to make you aware of the difficulties surrounding contrastive analysis and its
limited power. Nevertheless, the comparison between two forms of different languages is possible even if these forms
are not exactly equivalent, even if we cant access the whole scope of influence of each unit, we can limit this scope
and compare them in relation to that segment. Contrastive analysis has developed a technique that circumscribes the
range of the contrast to just one given factor or sense: the tertium comparationis. This means that the contrast
between two forms -between the range of senses associated to each of them- is relative to just one given parameter.
Lets say we compare the word floor and piso, they cover each a range of meanings; some of them are not
equivalent (for example, you may use piso in argentinian Spanish to mean ground) but they do match in relation to
that part of a building that is the surface on which one stands indoor (Longman). In conclusion, CA suggests that
contrast should take into account a single parameter not the full range of meanings. I consider this rule a valuable
methodological tool.
The tertium comparationis is a nice way to make CA (Contrastive Analysis) systematic and explicit. A complete
study should find out and expose the (set of) parameter(s) that are shared by two forms and the one(s) that are not
and should focus on the latter. A form here can be a structure of any size: a bound morpheme, a word, sentence or
grammatical form (Noun Phrase). Yet, in this course we want to address this issue in relation to the overall organization
of the system and, consequently, we would like to pursue the path of defining the tertium comparationis in very
1
Notas Unidad 1
Pars, Luis
general semantic ways just like the representation of events of type Y, reference to incomplete objects or even
pragmatic ways like give an excuse and only then look at the particular forms that are used by each language to
perform those tasks. In sum, we wont give up the possibility of a more holistic consideration. We can acknowledge the
presence of very general built in patterns that might give a language a shape that we might call its inherent logic (von
Humboldt used to call it the spirit of a language).
1. Defining preliminary linguistic notions
There isnt a unique perspective on the definition of what a human language is and we need to be aware that any
specific CA presupposes a definition of language. Thus, in this unit we are going to set up some basic and general
assumption about what we believe a language is and, consequently, about the way it should be described. Some
theories might stress formal structures whereas other theories might consider that it is the communicative function
that determines the fundamental aspects of any language.
What is a language? In Spanish there are two words: lengua y lenguaje. In English we usually take language to be
lengua and Language to be lenguaje. In short, a language is, like Spanish, English or Quechua, the language spoken
by a community that is different from the native language spoken by thousands of other communities. In contrast,
Language is what all these languages share, a set of universal properties inherent to any symbolic system that
constitutes a human language and/or inherent to any use by any speech community of any of those systems.
The chomskyan tradition has interpreted these universal properties about symbolic systems in a psychological
perspective. A language is basically a psychological reality, a mental object. English is the knowledge any native
speaker has that enables her/him to use English in order to successfully communicate. The universal aspect of that
knowledge the knowledge shared by any speaker of any language- is called internal language or I-Language. It is the
mental capacity that allows each individual to acquire any human language as a native language. We all know that we
are able to acquire any language, it all depends on where we are born and on the language of our parents or, in
general, caretakers. In contrast, the external language or E-Language is the language as used in every speech
situation performed by a linguistic community. E-language includes the infinite set of situations in which Spanish is
used and has been used. The actual use of a language implies mixing it and articulating it with individual speakers
purposes, social structures and rules, each speakers capability to perform those articulations, speakers memory, etc.
In sum, language use involves multiple knowledge, abilities and conditions of different nature (psychological,
sociological, etc.) and this makes impossible to determine specific linguistic properties. On the contrary, isolating the
1
pure linguistic competence involved in I-Language allows us to capture just the purely linguistic feature. The
Chomskyan view has maintained over the years that the only competence can be studied scientifically; furthermore,
competence is entirely independent from performance, which involves a murky mixture of linguistic competence with
an array of other cognitive faculties (like perception, memory and motor patterns) and socio-historic facts. Most
variants instantiating the core Chomskyan paradigm see competence as a formal apparatus; namely, competence is a
set of combinatory templates that organize purely formal features in hierarchical relations. Formal here strictly
means that the property has no footing on meaning; namely, it doesnt name any external world property nor
property but just one that has only substance within the symbolic system (i.e. nominative; inflection, etc.).
Furthermore, the real goal is to specify the universal aspects of any language specific compentence (i.e. English or
Spanish). This is Universal Grammar and it is thought to be the characterization with linguistic means of the properties
of the brain region devoted to store and process language. If competence is essentially a formal apparatus, Universal
Grammar is even more abstract, content free combinatory system.
1
These two notions are intended to replace the original chomskyan proposal that distinguished between
competence and performance, respectively. Competence is the knowledge that allows speakers to master their native
language and, further, to learn any language. Performance is the actual enactment of that knowledge in a particular
situation by a particular speaker.
2
Notas Unidad 1
Pars, Luis
Languages are psychological realities. Languages are in part sounds that can be heard and, even if we consider
writing as a derivative realization of a language, drawings that can be seen. Indeed, one hundred years ago, the
founder of modern Linguistics Ferdinand de Saussure- stressed that the sign units of any symbolic system natural
languages being the leading case among them- are constituted by a sound pole and a meaning pole. Children are
exposed to the Spanish sound and this exposition constitutes natural way to acquire a language. There are two crucial
caveats that need to be made to this description. First, children are exposed to native speakers utterances that
involve certain sounds in a particular combination and what is relevant here arent those specific symbols neither the
combination among them but the fact that there are certain patterns of sound combination that are part of the
language while others are not and Spanish is not the set of all the sounds we have been exposed to or even those we
have uttered but the pattern(s) followed by those symbol combinations. That is, as Saussure pointed out, a language is
not just a set sounds but a sound system (that he named langue and was thought to underlie parole, the actual
utterance of a linguistic symbol in a particular linguistic behavior): a set of interrelated patterns that speakers need to
follow to decode and produce Spanish symbols. The second caveat is that we all understand that language is about
information; it is about the meaning carried by linguistic symbols, which is not perceptually accessible.
Our main concern is rather the nature of that knowledge. The alternatives are quite a few. Lead by the Generative
Grammar (for example, Chomsky 1995), there is a group of theories that see linguistic knowledge i.e. language- as the
ability to manipulate string of symbols, that is, compute symbols: take a list of symbols, combine them and form a
larger and complex symbol that still belongs to the system of symbols. Languages are basically a system of symbols.
2
They have a set of units (words in the Lexicon or, more precisely, lexemes) and a set of patterns that enable the
combination of words into sentences. Those patterns are described as a set of rules. These rules constitute the syntax
of a language and they should generate the combinations of words that turn into sentences and rule out the
combinations that produce non-sentences.
This position tends to pay little attention if any at all to meaning. The rules are typically insensitive to any
semantic feature. It is a purely syntactic view of language. Obviously, Chomsky and its followers do recognize that
languages involve many kinds of knowledge beside the syntactic one. They do recognize semantic, pragmatic and
phonological knowledge but they are view as peripheral. The essence of a language and, consequently, the essence of
the language faculty that all human beings share is a computational system: The ability to manipulate symbols to form
well-formed string of them. Once those formal structures have been generated, Semantics adds meaning and
Phonology adds sounds to those units. Semantics is just the product of the interplay of Syntax that is, purely linguistic
structure- and our conceptual knowledge whereas Phonology is the interaction of Syntax and our way to produce and
process sounds.
In contrast, Cognitive Linguistics stresses the fact that languages are cognitive structures used by cognitive agents
for cognitive and communicative purposes. Linguistic forms are designed to convey meaning, which is a kind of mental
representation. The essence of language lies on its meaning carrier capacity, hence, its design is determined by the
properties of our cognitive representations, which are, in turn, determined by our needs generally speaking,
interaction with contexts- and by our fundamental condition: We are minds that grow in bodies. Meaning plays the
fundamental role in Cognitive Linguistics. This thesis has been pushed forward so far as to say that Syntax doesnt exist
(Langacker 1987). Nobody takes this thesis at face value any more, but its true that the focus of the cognitive research
has been about the ways in which meaning is represented in a particular language. For example, take the cognitive
representation of motion events. How are they represented in English and/or Spanish? This type of questions take us
to the meaning of words (i.e. motion verbs) and the way they are combined with other words (i.e. prepositions) to
form the meaning of the whole event as represented in a sentence. The focus is, then, the relation between concepts
and the meaning of words. The symbolic system symbols and their combinations- is relevant as long as they are
2
Strictly speaking, the units are not words in the usual sense but abstract representation of those words: Each unit is a
bundle of grammatical (morphosyntactic features) features.
3
Notas Unidad 1
Pars, Luis
meaning carriers. Rather than a unified theory, Cognitive Linguistics is more a domain of interests demarcated by the
prevalence of meaning and some basic assumptions about its nature. The first one is that meaning is not necessarily
compositional. This means that the meaning of a sentence is not reduced to the addition of the meaning of its parts
(words). There might be emergent meanings and they might be even the crucial part of the message. The second one is
that linguistic meanings as well as every day concepts- are not as logically organized as scientific concepts (at least,
ideally). In particular, they are not defined in terms of necessary and sufficient conditions but they have a more flexible
and fuzzy structure: A prototype structure. (Lakoff 1987; Ross et al. 1977). Concepts are defined by a list of features but
they might all be present at once in an instance in that case, the instance is a prototype or central exemplar of the
category- or only some of them might be present and in this last case the instance is a peripheral exemplar. This takes
our semantics far away from Aristotles logic, which has been dominant for more than a couple of thousand years. The
third one is that semantic representations dont come in isolation but rather each meaning is inserted in a conceptual
cluster or frame that typically goes beyond language and captures cultural traits and/or practices.
Functional grammars represent yet a different view of languages. They adopt a communicative perspective and,
hence, tend to view languages as social artifacts, as a device that is part of and has an essential in a community. The
defining feature of any language is the fact that allows communication and this is something that happens in a situated
context in which there is specific speaker and hearer with specific goals, world knowledge, histories, social status and
distinct abilities to interact and communicate- and they are embarked upon a specific social interaction. Functional
grammars tend to focus on what we might think is Pragmatics: the use that a speaker makes of a language in order to
communicate. They recognize that languages have a structure but it is thought that this structure is the result of the
satisfaction of the demands of speakers for a successful communication. So, in reality, functionalist linguists tend to
analyze only those formal aspects of a language that have a clear and direct effect or connection with communicative
3
situations.
The sentence is the formal structure at the core of any linguistic system. We communicate through sentences.
Neither a noun nor a verb by themselves is enough to constitute a communicative object. We only talk through
sentences. This ubiquitous yet typically oblivious fact suffices to justify the central claim of functional grammars,
namely that communication constitutes a crucial factor in explaining linguistic structure.
We shall adopt here the view that the nature of the knowledge of language is not merely about computational
manipulation of symbols that are stripped out of meaning. A description able to capture the nucleus of a linguistic
object can`t be purely syntactic. The essence of every linguistic object is the systematic integration of form and
content, that is, the fact that this coupling is systematic and mostly universal is the very essence of language. Any
sentence the natural speech unit- is, then, describable as a saturated information structure that represents form and
content in a rather integrated way resulting from the combination of simpler information structures according to
general patterns. Nevertheless, a purely formal consideration is possible and, indeed, necessary: languages are such
that the patterns that underlie the combinations are so tightly structured as to allow certain purely formal properties
(i.e. subject, direct object, male, female, etc.).
We will accept the existence of formal patterns without assuming they are per se the core and essence of the
linguistic system. In the chomskyan paradigm, symbols are seen as strings of sounds/characters and, hence, the rules
intended to manipulate them are just sensitive to that information. On the contrary, my point is that the essence of
3
A typical functional approach is represented by Systemic Functional Grammar. It is claimed by these authors that
language is a semiotic system that allows speakers to create meaning. This definition is right in a trivial sense.
Language is a symbolic system that is used to create meaning but there are many other semiotic systems beside
language (clothing, colors, monetary systems, etc.) and, hence, the definition doesn`t capture the specificity of
natural languages and this is precisely what we want, namely, we need to capture those properties that make
natural languages unique objects in the world and make our linguistic competence a capacity that has empowered
our specie in a radical way up to the point of being a crucial aspect of what we are.
4
Notas Unidad 1
Pars, Luis
language is that those formal patterns are able to carry meaning and do it so in systematic ways. This is particularly
true regarding Universal Grammar, namely, the linguistic properties that every grammar of any language share or, put
it differently, the space delimited by what is possible for any human language.
The perspective we shall adopt in this class is centered on the notion of linguistic efficiency, this means that any
theory of language should be able to explain how is it that every language allows speakers to talk about any cognitive
domain that they might experience. That is, every realm of experience can be represented and communicated
according to the needs of daily life. We can talk about our perceptions. We talk about what we hear, see, touch and so
on). How do we do it? First, we categorize, namely, we apply a name to every distinguishable stimulus we experience
and, then, we describe any change in it as well as its relations to other stimulus. We can talk about our feelings (what
we feel in the sense of body sensations but also, and more important, about emotions and values). We can talk about
other people, what they do, how they are, how do they relate to us and relate among them. We can talk about their
thoughts (their beliefs), their discourse (the texts they produce) and we can talk about our own thoughts and our own
discourse. In fact, in a pretty much amazing amount, when we say human experience, we are referring to our
experience with linguistic objects, be they the discourse of your mother, father, siblings and, later in life, your partner,
friends or the president of a country. To a surprising extent the world is just made of discourse and every language
allows us to talk about discourse.
The symbolic and communicative power of language its efficiency- lies on the systematic and flexible ensemble
of form and content. They have a physical dimension and a neurological part and they are a psychological,
interpersonal and sociological reality; further, they have to be learned and are transmitted and changed- from
generation to generation, namely, they are historical object and, in fact, they are the same language but not exactly
from region to region and from one social group to the other in the same region. Each aspect of this strikingly
miscellaneous portrait is essential to language.
Any language is determined by different factors, not only abstract schemata. The fact that the linguistic sign has a
sound component is probably the most crucial determinant of language shapes, of the fundamental properties of
language. It means that sounds need to be articulated, that is, physically produce by a motor pattern and this is only
done through time, every sign and every sound unit of every sing is articulated and produced one by one and arranged
in a temporal sequence. This temporal sequence is what makes SYNTAX possible, since Syntax is about the order(s)
underlying the combination of symbols and one order is given by WORD ORDER. It is true that word order can be
ultimately motivated on dependency relations described by syntactic schemata, but the very nature of these schemata
relies on the basic fact that symbols are arranged in a temporal sequence.
Language is also determined by our conceptualization systems. Any linguistic symbol is a sound-meaning coupling
and the meaning involves a representation, a concrete or highly abstract content that is part of our thoughts. These
representations are constituted with information coming from our sensory system, our emotions, our inferences, our
categorizations, etc. Many if not every of our cognitive capacities are involved in the building up of the semantic
content of a linguistic symbol.
The fact that languages are use to communicate is a crucial factor that has an impact on the very nature of the
basic and fundamental linguistic symbol, the sentence. We need to build up a sentence to express and communicate a
thought and we do this to an interlocutor: part of the information needs to be new for the addressee, you can`t say
something you know the hearer already knows.
Further, we build up social facts through
5
Notas Unidad 1
Pars, Luis
Language sound production sequence (temporal nature of

any sign
continuity
articulation
interpretation (hearing)
SYNTAX
cognitive representation (sensation, perception, concepts, beliefs)
SEMANTICS
Reality physical (temporal, spatial,
Ontology: individuals, classes,
PRAGMATICS
Social Reality biological society: mother, etc.
Social ranks
History and inheritance
The Chomskyan tradition gets it straight by assuming that language is essentially a symbolic system and that this
system is a mental capacity of some sort. This is the specificity of language. However, this system is, first, learned
through social interaction and used for the purpose of communication. These two undeniable facts point out to the
social reality of language and highlight the role of performance. A language is a collective mental capacity that is
transmitted from one generation to the other of a linguistic community; its very own nature is social: it depends upon
the presence of a community. In consequence, it is very much expected that the linguistic system is permeated by
certain the social conditions in which a language is used. For example, the fact that speakers typically (if not only)
structure their linguistic symbols around information that is new to the hearer has an impact on word order, it
regulates the use of pronouns and the choice of indefinite and definite articles. The speech situation permeates
through the grammatical organization of utterance via the meaning assigns to personal pronouns, verbal personal
inflection and tense, which is by definition a deictic category. It is also obvious that the nature of the content which is
information regulated by the constraints of the human mind, namely, the mind should be capable to produce it and
process it- highly determine the very structure of the system. After all, lets recall that a symbol has necessarily a
meaning pole.
6
Notas Unidad 1
Pars, Luis
Obviously, the view of competence as a pure formal device needs to be dramatically enriched. Languages
manifest themselves through human behavior in specific circumstances and with various and different purposes that,
however, should always involve communication. This is what has been called linguistic performance. A speaker utter
a sentence (or a chain of sentences) communicating information to a fellow recipient in the context of an
interpersonal or social interaction. The communicated content is information that can be about the external world,
the internal world (wishes, thoughts, beliefs, feelings (it hurts), emotions) and/or the social world (which includes
immerse in an interpersonal or social context. The goals of the linguistic behavior are necessarily articulated to the
ones that drive the interpersonal or social interaction but that in general can be thought to be the change in the
4
knowledge status -and possibly some beliefs- and even the influence on the behavior of the addressee.
The most salient shortfall of the radical communicative approach to language is that it pays very little and
superficial attention if any at all to the formal properties of the linguistic system. It is rather centered on describing the
content communicated in different situations and on capturing how this content interacts with interpersonal or social
situations. However, very little is said about how that content is encoded into sounds. This is precisely what grammar
the internal system of a language- is all about.
Our view settles on a fuzzy middle ground between a formal and a communicative approach. While this
approach focuses on the structure of a language (i.e. Grammar) as a symbolic system, it assumes that the nucleus of
5
Grammar involves the integration of formal schemata, meaning and speech situation features. In other words, core
Grammar points out to the systematic interplay of syntax, semantics and pragmatics, the key component of any
grammar. This view can be dubbed an ensemble grammar and it stresses the systematic while flexible
interdependence among grammatical components as the key factor in explaining the central properties and
effectiveness of human languages. It is heavily based on so called functional grammars; in particular, Role and
Reference Grammar (RRG). RRG is a theory centered on the syntax-semantics linking and on integrating information
structure into the grammatical description of the sentence. It proposes that there is a Universal Grammar, but instead
of looking for it in abstracts schemata, its features are to be found in the interplay of components. While we will adopt
many of the central ideas of RRG, the research program we have named ensemble grammar differentiate from it in
one key factor. For EG the formal and semantic pole of the linguistic symbol are not independently given. Hence,
linking is not the procedure that relates systematically syntactic schemata to independent semantic representation.
Unlike RRG, we assume that some features of the most basic and abstract semantic representations are linguistically
motivated. Meaning is not just made out of concepts or cognitive information, it is from the start conceptual
information linguistically encapsulated. Speaking a language is not the task of putting thoughts into the right linguistic
symbols. Thinking involves linguistically structured conceptual information and this is why thinking in Spanish is
different from thinking in English as I will be trying to show you throughout the course. In part, the fact that languages
create their own concepts is the reason why sometimes is so hard to define a semantic category like causation,
manner, present, etc. Thus, not all the meanings can be found in the external world or in the conceptual domain of
human experience because, precisely, they are linguistic creatures.
It is clear from our definition above that language is intrinsically associated to communication and social
interaction. We couldnt live the way we have been living for the past five or six thousand years without using
language as the essential tool of communication. Through language human beings have been able create large
collective agents, namely, large groups of individuals that behave in a coordinated way by sharing rules, memory,
4
In turn, it might be that the interaction is mostly determined solely by linguistic goals like you meet with somebody
to gossip about someone else; that is, in this case the goal is just to communicate information that might not have
any other consequence.
5
We conceive that Grammar is the actual underlying organization of a language while grammar -with small capital
letters- is the theory of that structure.
7
Notas Unidad 1
Pars, Luis
cognitive representations on the external world, the socio-cultural world and inner states. A collective agent is much
powerful than an individual and tend to be more efficient through the division of labor- acquiring the means to
survive and reproduce and adapt to new conditions in the environment. We might say also that by overpowering our
needs for survival our societies were able to give time to individuals to develop their mental skills through art, religion,
poetry, politics and, later, science, activities were language have an indispensable and determinant role as a means for
encoding and communicating information. In a very real sense, language should not be thought only as a tool for
communication but more fundamentally as a making sense device. There are objects that are linguistic object in a
fundamental way and they play a fundamental role in our lives, for examples, certain narratives religious, historical,
literary-, national constitutions and any other systems of laws, scientific theories, i.e. psychoanalysis, linguistic
theories, etc.
2. Grammatical descriptions
Every human language is a symbolic system. Each symbol is a sound-meaning association as has been known
since Saussure but there is much more than this. They are symbols within a system, in particular, a combinatory
system where they relate among themselves in countless but organized ways. Each symbol is a piece in an
organization where it is given a place, that is, it is set under certain category that defines a set of symbols that shares
fundamental formal properties. By formal it is meant, then, a property that makes sense within the symbolic system.
For example, dative is the name of set of pronouns in Spanish; it doesnt refer to any property of the external world
or any kind of human specific conceptualization of the world.
Lets distinguish between static relation and dynamic relation, distinction that points out to the kind of
arrangement in which they are stored, on the one hand, and the patterns in which they are combined, on the other
hand. The (for the most part) static arrangement is what has been called Lexicon. Dynamic relations are the ones
upheld by combinatory process.
2.1. Lexicon
Every English speaker has stored in its memory a set of linguistic symbols that we might call in a broad sense words. More
precisely, those words involve free and bound morphemes, both are minimal sound-meaning units. Free morphemes
are the ones that do not demand to combine with another specific morpheme in order to be used as a unit in a
sentence. For example, {love}, {lust}, {ball}, {short}, {easy} are all free morphemes. In contrast, bound morphemes
require to be combine (typically to a free morpheme) to form a word that can be used in a sentence. Some examples
are the plural marker on nouns {-s}; any tense marker on verbs {-ed}; or the derivational morpheme {-ation} that is
added to verbs in order to form nouns. Bound morphemes are grammatical morphemes, namely, pieces of the Lexicon
that have an abstract meaning and a rigid syntactic distribution (they show up in very specific places). Furthermore,
they belong to closed class forms, namely, a set of symbols that cannot be freely expanded by the addition of a new
member; for example, the set of verb inflectional morphemes in Spanish hasnt got any new member in probably two
hundred years. Most free morphemes belong to open class forms, like nouns, verbs, adjectives; almost on a daily basis
a new member is incorporated into the set due to technology and other social needs. However, some closed class
forms are free morphemes too; examples of them are {when}, {I}, {you}; they are also like bound morpheme-
grammatical words.
The Lexicon is not only a repository of morphemes. First, there is a dynamic aspect to it associated to the word
formation processes. This the domain described by morphology. Second, it is not merely a list of words but it has a
complex (grammatical) organization, which is a crucial aspect to Grammar.
2.1.1. Formal aspects of the lexicon:
Lexical Categories (word classes): every morpheme belongs to a class. Each class can be identified on formal grounds:
8
Notas Unidad 1
Pars, Luis
a. Syntactic distribution (places where it can show up in a syntactic structure; complements and modifiers it can take;
the categories of heads that can take them as complements, and so on).
For examples, nouns can be modified by adjectives (and not by adverbs) and can take articles as determiners; verbs
can be modified by adverbs and cannot take determiners; adjectives can be modified by adverbs; preposition
cannot be modified.
a. Nouns can be the subject, direct object or indirect object of a sentence. Verbs are the head of sentences.
b. Inflections (the set of morphemes that can combine with it):
For example, Spanish nouns take gender and number inflections (English nouns only number); Verbs dont take gender
but they are the only category taking tense. Preposition and conjunctions have no inflections.
c. Derivations (the set of derivational morphemes that can combine with it).
The morpheme {-able} combines with verbs to derive nouns (agreeable; derivable; sustainable); it cant combine
with nouns (*mouseable; *doorable).
d. Agreement relations
Spanish nouns need to agree in gender and number with adjectives. The subject of the sentence is typically a noun
and it has to agree with the verbal inflection in person and number.
Verb is a complex category in itself since it has subtypes with different syntactic distribution and inflectional
properties. Indeed, some of these forms may even function as nouns or adjectives.
Infinitives: (to) they may function as verb complements (complement clauses like in She wants to
dance)
(bear) main verb of auxiliary verbs like modals (She can dance very well)
Gerunds: Complement of perception verbs (I saw you mowing the lawn)
Noun (Smoking cheap cigars is dangerous)
Manner adverbial modifiers (She came home crying)
Participles (Present and Past):
Adjectival pples: I bought a used car.
She is a crying baby.
Passive pples: John bought the house built (by the army).
Noun is also a complex category, although much simpler than verb.
Proper Nouns
Common Nouns
[mass or countable]
Pronouns
9
Notas Unidad 1
Pars, Luis
There are different kinds of adjectives but the distinction is syntactically driven, namely, the two main classes are
attributive and predicative adjectives. In Spanish, there is a further distinction between prenominal and post-nominal
adjectives (una vieja amiga vs. una amiga vieja). These kinds of adjectives can be understood as functionally
different but they dont constitute different classes. There is no difference in their intrinsic meanings neither they take
different morphology.
3. Semantics
Lexical categories are sensitive to semantics in the sense that they relate to broad ontological classes; namely,
they are linked systematically to (nave) kinds in the external world. Nouns denote either individuals or sets of
individuals; roughly, they denote things, which we might be defined as a temporally stable physical object that can be
perceived and eventually manipulated. Nouns can denote also mass objects like water. They arent individuals but are
still perceivable non-temporal entities that can be arbitrarily divided.
Verbs refer to temporal entities that we might call events. Events are dynamic relations between individuals
or between an individual and a property; that is, relations that either evolve or hold in time. Adjective denote
properties, which are non-temporal parts of an individual that are shared by others. A property might be absolute or
gradable. It is absolute if an individual either has it or not, like being brown. In contrast, it is gradable if the individuals
might have it in different degree, like hot or tall.
The association of lexical categories with ontological categories is systematic but quite flexible. Ontological
events can be denoted by nouns, that is, situations that are necessarily temporal can be named by nouns. This is true
derivatively (i.e. deverbal nouns like destruction, construction, etc.) but also with basic nouns like the Spanish
pelea, duelo, etc. Thus, lexical categories cannot be reduced to ontological categories. However, we would be
missing a very strong and extended relation if we just dismissed the link as accidental; the pattern is regular and
strong, lexical categories are semantically motivated.
The fundamental question about meaning points out to its nature. There are three different views. First, you
might think that the meaning of a word is just an arrow on the sound part of a lexical item and points out to an entity
in the world. This is the extensionalist view; it resorts to two entities sounds and entities in the world. Second, you
might think that meaning belongs to the conceptual domain. The meaning of a word is a linguistically independent
concept. Therefore, there is the domain of concepts and the domain of linguistic forms and semantics is just the line
that links both independent domains. Third, meaning can be thought as the result of the interplay between concepts
and forms, that is, meaning is linguistically structured conceptual-cognitive information.
That is the avenue we will take in this class. Namely, semantic representations are not made up of solely conceptual
independent information. Meaning is linguistically determined. Meaning is not just conceptual-cognitive information.
There can be two different approaching in adopting this view. One is represented by the Minimalist Program is the
latest version of the theory of language casted in Chomskyan style. Borer (2010) maintains that the relation is the
following. Syntax generates abstract schemata and these are interpreted by filling the slot in them with conceptual
concepts. The model uses semantic vocabulary (events, cause and so on) as names of nodes in syntactic trees.
Following the main tenets of Distributed Morphology, this syntactically structured representation is also part of the
Lexicon; strictly speaking, there is no Lexicon. There are bare roots which dont have any formal specification but just
conceptual meaning. This meaning is structured when it is inserted in a syntactic tree. So, box is a root that, once
inserted in a syntactic schema, becomes either a verb or a noun depending on where it is placed. In this view, hence,
syntactic structures are entirely independent from meaning; they are just freely generated and some of them are
going to be interpreted, that is, they will be filled in with content. There are some fillings that are unacceptable while
others are acceptable. This is just because world knowledge.
10
Notas Unidad 1
Pars, Luis
Another perspective on the same integrative view of the interplay between syntax and semantics in
grammatical representations takes that, on the one hand, meaning is only partially determined by linguistic structure
and, on the other hand, meaning determines syntactic schemata. The arrow goes both ways, from form to meaning
and from meaning to form. In any case, in this view the essence of grammar lies on the interrelation between meaning
and form and there are mutual restriction imposed on each component. It is an empirical issue to identify them. We
wonder about the aspect of semantic representations that are linguistically determined and those that are just
cognitively determined. We wonder about the aspects of syntactic schemata that are motivated on semantic
structures. For example, there is an asymmetry in subjects and objects because verbs denote events which
overwhelmingly denote arguments with a different degree of activity. This is the kind of syntax-semantics relations
that are at the language structure core, the core that makes possible for language to be what it is and has this
prodigious impact on human nature.
There is a fundamental distinction in Lexical Semantics: structured meaning and content. Both are parts of
what is taken to be the information coded in a word but the first one is highly structured while the other has no role in
linguistic structure. The structured meaning is the one that is visible to syntax, that is, it is the one that directly
interacts with syntax and it is reasonable to think that its structure itself is motivated on facilitating the interface with
syntax. This is one sense in which we can interpret the idea that syntax determines semantics; that is, it demands a
structured meaning and, further, it has to be structured in a particular way.
3.1. Structured meaning
Verbs:
Human experience is cognitive, emotional, active and interactive and temporal. If languages are fit to construct and
capture our experience, they should be equipped with a highly sophisticated temporal system. Verbs are central to
language temporal system. They denote situations; for example, the verb build is an abstract representation that
relate two kind of things individuals- as an Agent that execute a building situation and as the Patient it is affected by
the building situation as it evolves through time. More precisely, every verb meaning denotes a situation type that,
once other information is filled in, can be used to capture a chunk of individual real experience.
The central and critical assumption of semantic theory is that meaning is compositional. Namely, that the
meaning of any (content) symbol is composed of parts that can be taken apart by semantic analysis and, further, some
of those parts are shared by a set of symbols, for example, verbs. This means that each part define a verb class, that is,
a set of verbs that share a meaning component. So, in this section we should analyze some of the basic semantic
components that define large verb classes.
The meaning of any verb can be represented in terms of a predicate constant over a potential individual,
namely, a variable. So, for example, run can be represented as run (x) and this means that there is constant meaning
that defines a set, the set of individual that includes x as a member: The set of runners. The variable x represents an
argument of the predicate; an argument is a necessary participant for the event to take place. The verb run requires
only one participant because this is just what you need in order for the running to take place. There are verbs with two
arguments (break, kill, love, like, and so on) and verbs with three participants (give, donate, envy, steal, etc.).
We can go on further and say that each verb assigns a unique semantic function or semantic role to each
argument of the event. Run assigns the function runner to its argument; like assigns liker and liked to its two
participants; give assigns giver, given, receiver to each of its three participants, respectively. These are called
individual semantic roles. However, we should immediately notice that there is something in common among givers,
donators, killers, builders, and so on and it is the fact that they are all participants that do something causing a change
or a movement (like the thrower in throw). They are said to be Agents and this is a semantic role, a role that ranges
over many individual roles. The most frequently mention semantic roles are Agent (the causer of an event), Actor (the
11
Notas Unidad 1
Pars, Luis
doer of some action), Theme (the participant that is located in a place or move through some space), Goal and Source
(the final place where a Theme is located and the initial place where it was located, respectively); Beneficiary (the
participant that gets a benefit from the event), Patient (the participant that undergoes some change of state or, in
general, is affected in the situation); Instrument (the participant that is in the middle of a causal chain: It causes a
situation because it has been acted upon it). These semantics role constitute a vocabulary that can take us pretty far
on the way to describe the meaning of verbs while capturing general patterns among them.
In addition to argument structures with semantic roles, structured meaning is constituted by temporal
schemata. There is widespread consensus that the meaning of every verb of every language belongs to one of five
basic temporal categories called Aktionarten: states (i.e. to be skinny, to be smart, to be at home, love, know, like,
etc.), activities (i.e. swim, walk, talk, cry, etc.), accomplishments (i.e. build, melt, die, write a poem, etc.), achievements
(i.e. explode, shatter, enter, land, take off, arrive, etc.) and semelfactive (i.e. know on the door, blink, cough, etc.).
These are all types of situations, namely, relations among individuals or between an individual and a property that
either hold or develop through time, understood as a directed line (path) of successive periods or intervals. All those
relations are linked to a sequence of intervals with the exception of achievements that are just temporally punctual.
They differ from one another in the way the relation among individuals connects to the temporal line. States denote
durative relations that maintain through time indistinctively. The meaning of John knew maths represents the
relation of knowing between John and the content math as stable throughout the relevant period of time (lets say
Johns adult life). States are, in this sense, homogeneous, never changing relations.
Activities are in a relatively homogenous and dynamic. John cried for his brother denotes a situation that
went on for a period of time (its durative) in a stable way. Stable should not be interpreted in a mathematical way. It
was stable in relation to the relevant factors, namely that if there was any difference between periods of time,
everything can be considered a natural part of crying. While states are indefinitely dividable and this makes them
absolutely homogeneous-, certain activities can be divided up only to a certain point. For example, if you take a very
small subinterval of the interval of time while John ran in the park yesterday you might not get an action that can
constitute by itself a running but just, lets say, raising a leg forward. On a larger scale, activities are dividable and this
is why we say that they are relatively homogenous. Dynamicity refers to the fact that the relation involves something
or somebody that is conceived as doing something (instead of being passively affected by the relation). There in entity
in motion or an individual executing some action that involves body motion or just action on another object.
Semelfactive are verbs denoting situations constituted by the iteration of a single punctual event (that might
happen in isolation too). For example, cough consist typically of a repetition of a expelling of air through mouth and
nose in an instantaneous burst along a period of time.
Accomplishments and Achievement are telic predicates. This means that, in contrast to the other three
categories, they denote situations that have an intrinsic end (this is what telos means in ancient Greek). In the case of
accomplishments, this telos makes these events bounded by a terminal point that is different from the rest and,
hence, they have an heterogenous internal structure since there is a part of the event (a subevent) that is different
from the previous parts. In other words, the event develops through time into a new situation. Accomplishment
typically involve change of state verbs, like creation verbs (to build, to write a letter) or melt, freeze, cook a meal, etc.
They all involve a Activity leading to a final state. For example, writing a letter involves a period of time in which there
is an action being performed that ends in an object being entirely finish, the letter is written. The telos is not arbitrary
but given by the nature of things so that once the letter is written you cant keep writing it or once the water froze you
cant keep freezing it. It is a completion point, an end imposed by the nature of things. In contrast, states (love),
activities (run) and semelfactive (cough) dont have a completion point; they are open situations so that they might
go on until they get to an arbitrary end.
The difference between Accomplishments and Achievements rests on temporal extension: while the formers
are durative the latter are instantaneous. Achievements denote instantaneous change of states explode or shatter.
12
Notas Unidad 1
Pars, Luis
In the window shattered because of the earthquake, window is the argument of the predicate and it changed state:
We learn from that sentence that it was not shattered at some point in the past t1 and it was shattered at t1+1. There is
some sort of contradiction in saying that Achievements are instantaneous while denoting a change of state which has
to be understood in terms of two different interval of times (i.e. t1 and t1+1). One possible way out of this problem is to
stop talking about instantaneous events and say they are non-durative, which might include any complex interval
made of two contiguous minimal subintervals. After all, linguistic representations are never defined with clock wise
precision; so that what is considered an instant in Linguistics might be different from the conception in Physics.
There is a derivate class constituted by an activity verb that gets bounded by an affected object. For example,
read is an activity, namely, an unbounded durative and dynamic situation that involves two participants, an Actor
(the reader) and a content participant (the symbols that were read). We may say John read a lot yesterday meaning
he was engaged in the reading activity and there is no intrinsic boundary to it, there is no telic point. However, if we
say John read the book yesterday, there is a telic point, namely, he finished the book. He affected the whole content
of the book with his reading. In this way, the activity becomes an accomplishment and this is why this type is called
active accomplishment and it typically involves verbs of manner of motion (like run to the store), verbs of
consumption (eat a pizza) and creation (write a novel). Notice that accomplishments are not dynamic by themselves.
These are the basic temporal structures that we need to account for structured meaning in any language. In
addition, we should add causation, that is, any of these temporal categories might be combined with the semantic
category CAUSE. It refers to a binary event, one subevent causes another subevent. The caused subevent belongs to a
specific Aktionart category while typically the causing subevent is not specified for any. For example, kill means that
an Agent participant caused an event: the change of state from being alive to being not alived- of another
participant.
In recent years, there has been an interesting research over so called variable Achievements. For example, the
verb cool means that there is a gradual change of state either from a given high temperature (The coffe cool down)
to an unspecified lower degree. In this case, the coffee cant be said to be cold. In contrast, cool might mean that the
liquid reached a certain temperature, namely, it reached a boundary. Under the first interpretation the verb denote
an unbounded Activity. There is a gradable scale on temperature involved in the meaning of this verb so that the first
sense refers to the upper part of the scale whereas the other sense denotes the lower part. The scale is bounded at
6
the bottom, something that is cold cant get even colder. In Spanish we cant get the meaning of an unbounded
Activity. El caf se enfri that is not as hot as expected or that the coffee is actually cold, but it cannot mean is getting
colder (we will have to use the progressive to get that sense: El caf se est enfriando).
It is quite amazing that every symbol that reflects a temporal aspect of the human experience in any natural
language belongs to one of these semantic schemata. This means that every content fills in one temporal schemata.
What do they consist of? First, they contain temporal operators like do, which reflects that event involves an Actor,
somebody doing something; BECOME and INGRESSIVE denotes that a there is a change, something was affected by a
change, either durative or instantaneous, respectively. In addition, the absence of operators indicates the presence of
a state, represented by pred (that is, any predicate). Second, those schemata contains argument positions, that is,
empty slots that are required to be fill with (referential) content in order to produce a semantic representation that
can be associated with a grammatical sentence.
3.2. Technical representations
6
There is a second issue with these verbs. The corresponding adjective is relative, namely, a cold coffee doesnt
refer to the same temperature than a cold tea or cold coke. I assume that this issue is not relevant for the
variability in meaning analyzed here.
13
Notas Unidad 1
Pars, Luis
There is a technical vocabulary to represent this information. As we have said, the initial point is to assume that every
verb is a predicate that has arguments. States are represented just precisely by just the predicate and its arguments
like (x, y)
Pat is a fool. be (Pat, [fool])
The cup is shattered. shattered (cup)
Kim is in the library. be-in (library, Kim)
Dana saw the picture. see (Dana, picture)
Activities are represented by the presence of a do predicate that takes an argument as Actor followed by the content
predicate as in
do(x, run(x))
The children cried. do (children, [cry (children)])
Carl ate pizza. do (Carl, [eat (Carl, pizza)])
Achievements
The window shattered. INGR shattered (window)
The balloon popped. INGR popped (balloon)
Accomplishments
The snow melted. BECOME melted (snow)
Mary learned French. BECOME know (Mary, French)
Active Accomplishments
Chris ran to the park. do (Chris, [run (Chris)]) & INGR be-at (park, Chris)
Carl ate the pizza. do (Carl, [eat (Carl, pizza)]) & INGR consumed (pizza)
Semelfactives
Dana glimpsed the picture. SEML see_ (Dana, picture)
Mary coughed. SEML do_ (Mary, [cough_ (Mary)])
Active accomplishments
a. Motion verbs:
do (x, [pred (x)]) <> do (x, [pred_ (x)]) & INGR be-LOC (y, x)
b. Creation/consumption verbs:
do (x, [pred1 (x, y)]) <> do (x, [pred1 (x, y)]) & INGR pred2 (y)
Causatives
14
Notas Unidad 1
Pars, Luis
The dog scared the boy.
[do (dog, )] CAUSE [feel (boy, [afraid])]
Max melted the ice.
[do (Max, )] CAUSE [BECOME melted (ice)]
The cat popped the balloon.
[do (cat, )] CAUSE [INGR popped (balloon)]
Sam flashed the light.
[do (Sam, )] CAUSE [SEML do (light, [flash (light)])]
Felix bounced the ball.
[do (Felix, )] CAUSE [do (ball, [bounce (ball)])]
Mary fed the pizza to the child.
[do (Mary, )] CAUSE [do (child, [eat (child, pizza)]) & INGR consumed (pizza)]
3.3. Grammatical tests.
We dont need to rely on our semantic intuition in order to determine if a verb belongs to an aspectual class or not.
There are grammatical test that taken together make most of the time reliable the decision to include a verb
under a specific category.
a. State: [+ static], [ dynamic], [ telic], [ punctual]

b. Activity: [ static], [+ dynamic], [ telic], [ punctual]
c. Achievement: [ static], [ dynamic], [+ telic], [+ punctual]
d. Semelfactive: [ static], [ dynamic], [ telic], [+ punctual]
e. Accomplishment: [ static], [ dynamic], [+ telic], [ punctual]
f. Active accomplishment: [ static], [+ dynamic], [+ telic], [ punctual]
Tests for Aktionsart classes
Criterion State Achiev Accomp Activity Active Accomp
1. Occurs with
Progressive
No* No* Yes Yes Yes
2. Occurs with
adverbs like
vigorously,
actively,
etc.
No No No Yes Yes
3. Occurs with
adverbs like
quickly,
15
Notas Unidad 1
Pars, Luis
slowly, etc.
No No * Yes Yes Yes
4. Occurs with
X for an
hour, spend
an hour
Xing
Yes* No * Irrelevant * Yes Irrelevant
5. Occurs with
X in an
hour
No No* Yes No Yes
6. Can be used
as stative
modifier
Yes Yes Yes No Yes
Formal representation
STATE predicate (x) or (x, y)
ACTIVITY do (x, [predicate_ (x) or (x, y)])
ACHIEVEMENT INGR predicate (x) or (x, y), or

INGR do (x, [predicate (x) or (x, y)])
ACCOMPLISHMENT BECOME predicate (x) or (x, y), or

BECOME do_ (x, [predicate (x) or (x, y)])
ACTIVE ACCOMPLISHMENT
do (x, [predicate (x, (y))]) & INGR predicate (z, x) or (y)
CAUSATIVE CAUSE ,
where , are logical structures of any type
The final note on Semantics should be about structural ambiguities. By this concept I mean the fact that a verb that
is, a single lexical semantic representation- might be associated with different semantics while keeping the
same nuclear meaning.
Load
Sink
Upset: Bill upset the teacher.
Mary got upset.
Mary is upset.
Newspaper:
4. SYNTAX
The natural unit of speech is the sentence. Since speakers of any language need to produce sentences in order to
communicate, they should be the center of any theory of language structure. Beyond the internal structure of a
16
Notas Unidad 1
Pars, Luis
sentence into the text or discourse we are out of the domain of grammar. Sentences are complex symbols; namely,
they have smaller symbols as parts that are assembled together following a certain and specific order. There are
material constraints that explain in part the nature of a sentence. Since every linguistic symbol has a sound pole, in
order to talk we produce sounds through our vocal tract applying a very complex motor. Given our body constitution
(one vocal tract per brain/body), we can only utter a sound at a time and this means that in order to express a
sentence, it parts need to be set into a temporal sequence, just one symbol after another. Which symbol do we utter
first and which one should follow is not an arbitrary issue. There is an order that ought to be followed; not every
sequence will do it. In fact, only some of the logically possible ones are part of a language. For example, the following
string of words is not a sentence.
(1) *Gave the us tall a wonderful student lecture.
In contrast, the same words ordered in a different sequence are perfectly acceptable.
(2) The tall student gave us a wonderful lecture.
The order of the sequence obeys pre-established patterns that are captured by grammatical schemata. Grammars are
entirely devoted to describe and understand the patterns that determine the organization of a sentence and that
make it possible. In particular, syntax is the component of a grammatical theory that is centered on the purely formal
aspects of those schemata. These formal features can be described by a vocabulary that makes no reference to
meaning and they predict the right place of words and the set of formal relations between them in a sentence. They
are technically called phrases just like noun phrases, prepositional phrases, verb phrases, etc. Syntax contains a set of
schemata for noun phrases, verb phrases, etc. and a set of sentence schemata.
As it was observed by Chomsky decades ago, the nature of syntax is different from semantics as seen by the different
enforcement of their respective requirements. A combination of words that severely deviates from a formal schema
set the linguistic object out of the system as shown by (1)
In contrast, semantic deviations might most of the time be reinterpreted as, for example, a figurative
expression.
(3) That movie blew me away.
This difference does not target structured meaning, though. It is relevant for content meaning.
(4) The tall student talked too much.
(4) S NP VP
NP Det N ADJ
VP V AdvP
AP ADJ
AdvP ADV ADV
AdvP ADV
ADJ {tall, }
ADV {much, too, .}
Det {el, .}
N {alumno, .}
V {lleg, }
(5)
17
Notas Unidad 1
Pars, Luis
S
NP VP
VP AdvP
Det AP N V
The tall student talked too much
The ultimate goal of a syntactic theory ought to be to find the shared properties if there exist any at all- of every
phrasal schema (for example, the X-bar theory).
The consensus is that
a. Phrase structure (PS) theory are all labeled, this means, each one belongs to a certain type. Furthermore, there is no
PS lexically defined. Namely, there is no PS associated with a single verb; otherwise, we would rather talk
about a construction not a PS.
b. Each PS type contains an obligatory lexical member, the nucleus. The rest are optional members. For NPs is N; for
APs is Adj; for VPs is V; for PPs is P; etc. Now, the question this point raises is S. What is its nucleus? Well, any
S needs an NP subject and a V, so there is no single head. Maybe, this is a desirable outcome that will set S
apart. Since S is different from the rest on a functional level i.e. it is the unique natural unite of speech- this
wouldnt be an unexpected outcome.
c. The nucleus projects its property to the whole structure. That is, an NP behaves like a Noun by which I mean: it acts
as subject, DO or IO in a sentence; it can be the object of a preposition. Semantically, the reference of the
noun is the reference of the NP.
d. The Phrase is a shelter; nothing of what happens inside can be determined by an element belonging to another
phrase unless this element is the nucleus that contains the phrase as member. This means that agreement
relations, for example, can only take place between symbols within the same phrase (maximal projection) and
one symbol has to be the head of that phrase. This is essential.
In short, the order consists in complex units that are the result of combination of symbols that need to appear
together. There is flexibility regarding the mutual order of phrases, though:
(1d) A wonderful lecture was given by the tall student.
Syntax is the kind of knowledge described above: Symbols that need to be placed next to each other forming a
sequence so that, if moved to another position a change in the relative order-, they have to be moved as a whole
without leaving behind any symbol of that unit. Furthermore, this knowledge is far more complicated that just joining
the word that is next to one another: There are parts of sentences i.e. phrases- that are not necessarily put one next
to the other but they still constitute a single unit: discontinuous constituents.
18
Notas Unidad 1
Pars, Luis
(6) a. The kid that was crying brought the luggage to the front of the desk exhausted.
The subject of the adjective exhausted is the kid, so, the kid exhausted form a unit with constituents that are
farther apart from a spatial point of view.
Syntax is about the constitution of phrases through combinatory processes and that what hold together those
symbols within a unit is the structure of the phrase and this is clearly given by an asymmetric relation among the
constitutive symbols (i.e. the constituents): in the tall student the phrase is nominal in nature and, hence, the noun
student has a more significant role than the adjective tall or the definite determiner the. We say that phrases are
headed, namely, they have a head, which is that symbols that transmit its own properties to the whole structure and,
crucially, it demands the rest of the symbols to match some of its own properties. This is agreement and its clearly
visible in languages with a rich morphology like Spanish where nouns are marked by gender and number (i.e. profesor
is singular and masculine) and the adjective (alto) needs to match up those properties.
To sum up, sentences show an internal hierarchical structure made of symbols that combine into phrases that, in
turn, combine among each other. That structure is rather abstract, its like an abstract template that is filled in by
words and phrases. Furthermore, they all have a dominant symbol i.e. the head- that gives the whole structure its
properties. This structures are not dependent of the presence of sequences of symbols one next to the other.
Syntax is the finite and very small set of patterns that allows us to build a possible infinite set of sentences.
4. Interface
The schema in (5) misses meaning, which is a necessary pole of linguistic symbols. The meaning of sentence (3) comes
from the meaning contributed by each lexical item and the way they interrelate within the semantic representation.
This is the principle of compositionality.
There is a core idea shared across every grammatical theory: There is a critical difference between core and peripheral
syntax. Core syntax is the domain demarcated by the verb and its syntactic argument, which are typically expressed as
bare NPs and exceptionally by PPs with non-predicative prepositions (semantically ineffective). This domain is the one
that satisfies the lexical semantic representation of the verb regarding the argument slots. Therefore, a first relevant
observation regarding systematic correlations in the syntax-semantics interface is that argument positions of the
structured meaning of verbs (as represented in verbal semantic representations or LSs) are linked to position in an
exclusive syntactic domain. Elements that are not part of the lexical semantic representation i.e. adjuncts- are
represented outside core syntax. In other words, semantic arguments are represented in the core (they are structure
building elements) whereas adjuncts in the periphery (they do not build new structure). In (3), too much is an adverb
that helps to locate temporally the event denoted by the verb. It is not part of the semantic representation of the verb
talk.
(6) do(x, talk(x))
According to (6) the only lexically required information is the one that expresses the Actor x, the rest is optional (i.e.
non-lexically required). Since too much is an adjunct; it is not a structure building constituent; in (5), it combines with
a VP and the outcome is still a VP (in contrast, the combination of VP with NP produces S, it is a structure building
combination).
Is there any evidence that syntax makes a strong difference between lexically required and optional
constituents? Yes,
19
Notas Unidad 1
Pars, Luis
a. Every syntactically required argument is a lexically required argument (the reverse might have exceptions
under specific conditions but, generally speaking, also holds).
This difference is massive. Grammar requires speakers to behave in a specific way in the case of arguments
and if not put the object out of the system (it does not belong to Spanish) whereas for adjuncts Speakers are free to go
one way or the other, the result will be part of the system.
b. In Spanish and English, arguments are bare NPs directly connected with V whereas adjuncts are PPs (if
participant denoting expressions) or modifiers, namely, non-referring expressions like adjectives or adverbs so they do
not denote participants.
c. The verb cant impose semantic restrictions on adjuncts (it does to arguments).
d. Arguments play syntactic function -subject, direct object, indirect object- that are formally regimented and
differentiated. For example, the subjects agrees with the verbal inflection in Spanish; the object is the NP promoted to
subject in passive sentences; in English the IO can be promoted too, in Spanish clitic pronouns target direct object and
indirect object functions.
e. Different behavior for the extraction of arguments out of complement or adjunct clauses:
An example:
(7) a. Qu dijo Pedro que Mara traa?
b. Qu quiere Pedro que Juan pinte?
c. *Qu compr Pedro el sof cuando vendi?
(8). **Qu llegaste cuando decas?
b. Qu llegaste diciendo?
What these examples show is that the direct object of an embedded verb (cantar) can show up in the
domain of the main verb (llegar) in the syntactic structure underlying (7) but not in the syntactic structure underlying
(8). Obviously, both syntactic structures are different. Where is that difference? In principle, both embedded phrases
are optional technically speaking, they are adjuncts as opposed to arguments- the Gerund Phrase in (7) and the
embedded clause in (8) might be dropped without affecting the grammaticality of the sentences. Second, both phrases
have an adverbial function, they both give further information about the event denoted by the main verb. The
differences are:
a. The gerund is a non-finite form whereas decas is a finite one.
a. A consequence of this is that the gerund phrase cant have an explicitly expressed subject whereas
decas might: Llegaste cuando Pedro deca algo or Lleg cuando vos decas algo.
a. The referent of the subject of V2 in (4) can be different from the subject of its main verb. In
contrast, the (implicit) subject of the infinitive must be the same participant than the subject of its main
verb.
b. There is a conjunction joining V1 and V2 in (4), there is nothing in (3).
None of the factors mentioned above can explain per se the difference but they do indicate that there is an underlying
template that is different in (3) and (4). A syntactic answer is that the Gerund Phrase in (3) is a verb phrase whereas the
20
Notas Unidad 1
Pars, Luis
embedded structure in (4) is a full (embedded) sentence. Now we can state a generalization in these terms: A direct
object of V2 can be place within the environment dominated by V1 if it is taken out of a verb phrase VP but not if it is
taken out of a Sentence.
(9) Qu dijo Pedro que comi ___?
**Qu dijo Pedro cuando comi ___?
Qu quiso Pedro que Juan comprara ___?
**Qu quiso Pedro cuando Juan compr ___?
f. Obligatory reflexivization:
(10) Juan se afeit a s mismo.
*?Juan se afeit a l mismo.
Juan compr el auto para s/l mismo.
Juan se regal el auto a s mismo.
*Juan se regal el auto a l mismo. **Me regal el auto a yo mismo.
Juan sac esa suma para l mismo.
In sum, grammars treat differently semantic argument and adjuncts.
4.1. The lexicon revisited
The lexicon is the set of words that anybody who speaks English or Spanish needs to know; this means, one needs to
have it stored in long term memory. You can think of the Lexicon as a dictionary but with the following proviso. While
the organization of a dictionary follows the alphabetical criterion, the mental lexicon is a set of networks driven by
different organizing principles. The links of the semantic network are, precisely, semantic in nature so that motion
verbs are set in a single group, psych verbs are set in a group, sound emission verbs are set together in another group
and so forth. Even if there are certain uncertainties about the actual shape of the lexicon, there is mounting
psycholinguistic evidence that those groupings are right and it comes from semantic priming and speech errors. The
previous processing of a semantically related word W1 speed up the processing of W2, this means that the processing
of W1 activated W2 because they are stored in the same area. In addition, speech errors of the substitution kind are
overwhelmingly more frequent between semantically related words.
Each lexical entry consist of the association of information coming from different grammatical components, thus
the lexicon itself is the primary linking domain of among the almost all the other grammatical components, essentially,
phonology, syntax and semantics. Hence, the constituents of the lexicon do not originate on it itself, they are structures
imported from other grammatical components essentially phonology, syntax and semantics- except for idiosyncratic
information and content information that has no direct bearing on grammar. The specific meaning of walk
(presumably something like a living entity raises one foot, moves it forward while maintaining the other(s) foot(feet) in
contact with the floor, iterating this move over and over) is grammaticality irrelevant, the only aspect that matters is
the type or kind: its about doing something, it`s an activity verb, hence, its only argument is a subject. The
grammatically relevant semantic meaning is highly abstract: it is the information carried by the abstract schemas
provided by the semantic component. The full content of the verb is purely lexical. The other information provided by
the lexicon is about its own organization at the semantic level: it has to do primarily with the rich semantic content and
only subsequently the schematic content comes into play.
21
Notas Unidad 1
Pars, Luis
/kill/
FN__FN
[do( x, )CAUSE (BECOME [dead(y)]
The semantic component of a grammar is usually understood as the set of semantic structures that serve as the
frames that organize lexical information and they do it so by foregrounding certain information as more relevant
according to two criteria: linking to syntax and place in the lexicon. The lexical representation of kill is an example of
semantic structure; it foregrounds two event participants to which it assigns two roles Agent and Patient- by means of
two general semantic notions: causation (CAUSE) and change of state (BECOME). This is the structure that is relevant to
syntax. Syntax needs to be given the number and role of the argument (semantically required participants of an event,
that is, those that are the minimum required for the event to take place).
The rich content of the verb is encapsulated in the predicate dead, it contains the identity of the verb that should
determine its specific place in the semantic network of the lexicon within the change of state of living entities.
4.2. Linking theory
One of the most studied and crucial aspect of the syntax-semantics interface is linking, which refers to the
realization of semantic arguments in syntactic structures. More precisely, it points out to the systematic relations
between syntactic functions (subject, direct and indirect object) and argument slots in a semantic representation.
Taking the speakers perspective that is, the semantics-to-syntax direction-, the issue can be presented by taking any
two argument verb lets say the verb love- and the question is how we can know which argument should be
projected in which syntactic function. The answer is that the lover should be subject and the loved one should be
direct object. This realization cannot be reversed. This apparently obvious and trivial answer tells us that grammar
places a systematic link between arguments and syntactic functions. This information is equally crucial for the hearers
perspective, which activates the syntax-to-semantics direction. In order to process the following utterance we need to
know who did what to whom; otherwise, we can`t grasp the meaning of it.
(11) A cat killed a lion.
We know it was the cat that killed the lion. How can we know it? Because a cat is the subject and a lion is the object
and there is a systematic link between killers and subjects and killees and direct objects. The relation target a superior
level of generalization in the semantic representation. It`s not about individual roles but about generalized semantics
roles of the type Agent, Actor, Theme, Patient and so on.
(12) Peter kissed Mary.
How do we know that Peter is the Agent and Mary the Patient? Because Peter is the Subject and Mary the Direct
Object and there is a rule linking Agent to Subjects and Patients to Direct Objects. The following linking rule establishes
a correlation between syntactic functions and semantics roles (the function type that participants play in the events
denoted by verbs) that is valid across all the verbs of a language, further, across every language. Thus, when we select
a verb to build a sentence, we dont need to ask ourselves how this particular semantics can be expressed in syntax,
since there is a general rule, we just apply it. When we learn a language, we dont need to find out the right syntax for
every verb, we just apply the one of the corresponding verb in our native language and it might be right for the most
part most of the time.
4.3. Principles of the syntax-semantics interface:
22
Notas Unidad 1
Pars, Luis
Completeness: all the arguments should be realized in syntax.
Number of arguments: no lexical item can have more than three arguments.
Linking structure: The underlying idea is that the realization of lexical meaning into core syntax is determined by an
activity hierarchy. Namely, arguments are order in relation to the relative level of activity of the semantic role
they fulfill. The most active role is going to be interpreted as an Actor and the less active role (that is, the most
passive role) as Undergoer. Typically, Actors are mapped into subject position whereas Undergoers into direct
object position. If there is a third argument, this will be mapped to indirect object position (and, sometimes, to a
PP). So, the underlying assumption is that every verb meaning that involves more than one argument makes
them play, first, different semantic roles and, second, they differ in the level of active involvement in the event.
23
Notas Unidad 1
Pars, Luis
Subect D.Object
Actor Undergoer
Do(x, ... do(x, ... pred(x, ... pred(...,y) pred(x)

AGENT EFFECTOR LOCATION THEME PATIENT
CREATOR PERCEIVER STIMULUS ENTITY
MOVER COGNIZER CONTENT
ST-MOVER WANTER DESIRE
L-EMITTER JUDGER JUDGMENT
PERFORMER POSSESSOR POSSESSED
CONSUMER EXPERIENCER SENSATION
OBSERVER EMOTER TARGET
USER ATTRIBUTANT ATTRIBUTE
IDENTIFIED IDENTITY
VARIABLE VALUE
PERFORMANCE
CONSUMED
CREATION
IMPLEMENT
(taken from Van Valin 2005)
24
Notas Unidad 1
Pars, Luis
NP VP
Det N V NP
Det N
A student broke the vase
Actor Undergoer
Do(x, ... do(x, ... pred(x, ... pred(...,y) pred(x)
CAUSE ([do (student, )] , [BECOME broken (vase)])
4.5 Concluding remarks on interface

The nucleus of the grammatical machinery is the coupling of the syntactic schemata of basic sentences and lexical
semantic representations.
Syntax imposes very austere and strict conditions on semantic representations. Every sentence made up of any verb
expresses one of these very few core schemata.
S NP VP
VP VNP // V NP NP // V PP// V AP // V S [recursion]
There is no other option for verb meanings than to get expressed in one of those schemata. Since verbs capture the
infinite variety of situations that constitute human experience, the content included in those meanings is reach and
immensely diverse. Still, languages have manage to fit any kind of content to (more or less) six grammatical schemata
and the coupling of these syntactic structures with content is highly systematic: it is not the case that every speaker
fills in those structures with content in an arbitrarily. This is possible because the meaning that interacts directly with
syntax is very abstract; namely, not all the content that is part of the meaning of a verb is grammatically visible. Only
the structured meaning as we have described it in terms of aspectual classes (Aktionarten), argument structures and
semantic roles.
5. Information structure within grammatical representations
The impact of Pragmatics the conditions that determine the use of language in actual situations- on syntax is
mainly restricted to the domain called information structure, it refers to the organization of the constituents of a
sentence into new and old information. The new information is typically called Rheme or Focus whereas the old
information is called Topic or Presupposition or Theme (the original notions came from the Prague School; they were
Theme and Rheme). The idea is that these notions determine the word order of the sentences together with syntax.
There are basically three information structure types: sentence focus, predicate focus and restricted focus. In the first
type the whole sentence is focus, namely, new information. Its the case where sentence (1) is uttered in a context
where it answers the question what happened?
25
Notas Unidad 1
Pars, Luis
(13) Peter brought the kid exhausted.
Predicate focus designates a structure where the new information is the predicate and the old this means, known-
information is given by the rest of the sentence (i.e. the predicate). This means that in the case of (1), speaker and
hearer are talking about Pedro and what the hearer doesn`t know is what he did (i.e. he brought the kid exhausted).
Restricted focus refers to the election of a particular constituent of the sentences as focus. It can be any constituent.
For example, A could utter John brought the kid exhausted to which B says PETER brought the kid exhausted. Its a
contrastive focus where only one constituent is new information.
If the sentence is negated as in (14a) the negation operator has scope only over exhausted, because it is the
focus.
(14) a. John didn`t bring the kid exhausted.
Also, if frequency adverb modifies the sentence, it has scope over the main verb, which is the presupposition (that is, it
is not part of the focus). It is not that the kid is always exhausted but that only every time he is being brought by John.
(14b) John always brought the kid exhausted.
As you might have guessed, Phonology plays a crucial role in information structure. Intonation together with word
order and ellipsis are the main means used to materialize information structures in linguistic forms. You may not need
to change word order to signal a restrictive focus in one constituent: you just set intonational stress on it (for example,
Peter BOUGHT the new house, i.e., he didn`t rent it).
Languages are very sensitive to information structure; there are even constructions whose all seemingly
purpose is to materialize certain patterns like
(15) It was John who bought that house.
This structure is sometimes called topicalization because it takes a constituent (i.e. John) out of a clause so that it
becomes topic/old information in it (whereas it`s the new/salient information of the whole sentence). The point is that
once you choose this kind of construction, you are no longer free as a speaker to select any other information
structure.
The other dimension of Pragmatics that has a direct bearing on grammar is the pragmatic enrichment of lexical
information through conversational implicatures. As we have seen, semantic information is very schematic in lexical
items. Technically, lexical representations are said to be vague, where vagueness means underspecification. For
example, if I use the word cousin it can refer either to the nephew of your mother or father, crucially, not both at the
same time. However, the meaning of cousin doesn`t specify that information and the crucial point is that this
pragmatics comes into play to fill in the blanks. This kind of situation is pretty much the norm in language. We are
going to go into more details about this at the end of section 1 of the syllabus.
6. Grammar and the notion of Language.
Contrastive Analysis is devoted mainly to the comparison between grammatical structures of two languages. The
question is, what is the relation between the grammar of English and Spanish and the English or Spanish language,
respectively? Clearly, someone may know consciously English grammar without being able to speak or understand
English so that the two notions are not the same. Grammar is a part of a language, that part that is highly structured
and, hence, can be described by rules, principles or general restrictions.
Obviously, the fact that languages have grammars at their cores makes them suitable for communication and makes
them learnable. If a language were not made of general and abstract (phonological, morpho-syntactical, semantic)
26
Notas Unidad 1
Pars, Luis
patterns, each linguistic sign (each sentence for example) would have to be crafted out of scratch. In contrast, every
linguistic sign is put together following phonological, morpho-syntactic and semantic rules. Furthermore, the rules are
such that they are able to create an infinite set of units, amount that should be unthinkable if the construction process
were merely proper of artisans.
In addition, the fact that the process is rule governed produces artifacts that can be repeated and recycled over
and over. This fact is central for communication since it rests on the possibility of reproducing the mental content in
the speakers mind in a different mind. In other words, the condition that makes communication possible is the
existence of objective content, namely, information that inhabit not only a subjective individual mind but the mind of
each and every individual of a linguistic community; the fact that, mutatis mutandi, the meaning of the word horse
can be reproduce without major differences in the mind of every English speaker. From words to sentences, objectivity
is made possible by the use of rules and, in general, by the fact that language is a rule governed behavior.
What is kept from a language once grammar is left out from consideration? In a word, what is kept is the real
linguistic behaviors, the everyday phenomenon of human beings using a language to carry out social actions. The
ontology of any object cannot be limited to its intrinsic structure (grammar), part of what an object is has to do with
the ways in which it is articulated with rest of the objects of the real world. The significance of the wheel cannot be
reduced to its geometrical shape, it has to include also the impact of the wheel on human history and the development
of economy and technology. In this sense, a language isn`t only grammar, any human language includes an essential
and constitutive role in human culture and, further, they are fundamental in the constitution of our subjectivity: it is
crucial to each of us the fact that we can talk to ourselves creating daily internal dialogues. However, the chomskyan
distinction between I and E language is relevant. We have direct access to E-language and, through it, to I-language.
This means, that as translators, you are going to be dealing with E-language and, hence, you may think reasonably that
you only need to study E-language. Nevertheless, the hypothesis is that in order to understand E-Language we need
necessarily but no only- to study I-Language or, in other words, grammar. Why is it so? As we already said, you can`t
grasp E-language at once given its infinite variations. It is different according to register (formal and informal; informal
among friends, among business partners, between a couple, etc.). Linguistic variation is high at regional levels (the
Spanish spoken in Santiago de Chile is different from the one spoken in Buenos Aires) and at a sociocultural level (the
Spanish spoken in Los Cerrillos and the one spoken at La Vacherie or any high-end gated community). In sum, the first
point is that E-language is as such ungraspable; it needs to be partitioned in (perhaps infinite) parts to properly study
it. Second point, there is always something in common among all the real life situations included in E-language. That is
grammar and, ultimately, I-Language. The internal structure of a language is the mechanism that we have internalized
and that allow us to produce a possibly infinite set of sentences that we have never heard or utter and that is largely
independent of specific world knowledge.
Our bet in this course is that by studying grammar and comparing grammatical systems you will be empowered to
better solve specific issues of translation by solving them by principle (as opposed to by intuition only). More precisely,
our hypothesis is that the grammar of each language comprises an intrinsic general logic that may differ from the
intrinsic logic of another language. An intrinsic general logic (IGL) is a particular and foreground coded information as
well as the way to distribute it through the system according to the available resources. The IGL of Spanish is different
from the IGL of English and, further, each IGL consists of a structured set of logics, each particular logic deals with
different domains: we are going to study and contrast the logic of Event Construction in English and Spanish as well as
the temporal logic.
We will deal mostly with comparing English and Spanish grammars, however, the last section will include
something about Verbal Actions and in doing so we will address the core of the articulation of language and
interpersonal interaction.
7. A fundamental finding in the English-Spanish contrast
27
Notas Unidad 1
Pars, Luis
This second part of unit 1 rests on two central hypotheses. First, languages differ from one another. Second -and
perhaps more controversial- the native language spoken by the speaker determines the way native speakers think.
Thinking is a very complex process and, for sure, not every aspect of it is sensitive to language. When authors (for
example, Bowerman & Levinson 2001 or Slobin 2008) talk about the relation between thought and language, they
mean mostly pre-conscious thoughts and even conscious thoughts, which is the kind of thoughts we are able to control
to certain extent and manipulate. This thought consists of discrete categories and, further, involves the mental dynamic
akin to finite state processes (namely, a process that consists of changes from a finite and definite state to another
state) as opposed to a continuous flow. This kind of thought is usually named categorization and is involved, for
example, in getting cognitive representations from our perceptual experience. Another process that is clearly language
dependent is reasoning. For example, if you utter My kid is really smart, the listener would infer that you have a single
7
kid and this is not because any information accessed to through any other source than language.
Here I will make the case that the constitution of cognitive representations of dynamic visual stimuli is
determined by the kind of lexical semantic representations that is prevalent in the speakers native language. In
particular, I will focus on event representations to show that Spanish focuses on the Result/final part of the event
whereas English focuses on the medial part of the eventuality, that is, on the Activity not on the Result of the
eventuality. Furthermore, Spanish makes use of an inferential strategy based on prototypical information and
conversational implicatures to communicate the same content, although I also show that the content isnt exactly
identical. In English the supplementary strategy to code explicitly information about Result is syntactical: the
resultative construction.
The overall thesis is that the Spanish lexicon tends to specify Result and, more broadly, static representations.
Activities are described through syntactic means. In contrast, English represents the opposite pattern: dynamicity is
captured in the lexicon whereas Result in Syntax.
In Semantics an event is the entity (object) described by the meaning of every verb. Each verb meaning represents
an eventuality type. The verb kill, for example, represents a type that is instantiated in the real world any time some
living thing dies because of the causal action of some agent. There were twelve killings in Aurora, Colorado, recently.
Each of them was an event that instantiated the event type described by kill.
Verbs denote tree kinds of eventuality type in every language: states (love, fear, hate, be, etc.), activities (walk, cry, yell,
cough, write, etc.) and events (build, take, grab, destroy, sink, etc. In this class Im putting accomplishments and
achievements together). In any eventuality, there is one participant that performs an activity over time (walk) or
changes in some ways (melt) or there are two or more participants related because the activity of the one affects in a
way the other one. This two options reflects dynamic eventualities, namely, those that involves some (constant or
either abrupt) change over time. In contrast, states are eventualities that describe how a property holds -not changes-
over time like know mathematics, which doesnt need to be different over time as it is required for example by learn.
In any case, an eventuality is a temporal unit: during the course of time or time flow a property or relation hold or a
change takes place (either gradually or abruptly).
The point is that in the semantic domain of dynamic spatial relations, Spanish speakers tend to describe situations
in terms of verbs that denote events (and, specifically, events with Results) rather than Activities. In contrast, English,
English descriptions of the same visual stimuli tend to give more information about Activities. This difference is caused
by the option each system gives to their speakers; it`s not about the speakers intentions.
7
Beneath this level, we can find multiple kinds of automatic and unconscious processes governed by genetically determined mechanisms or
conditions. We may take visual, auditory and tactile perceptions as examples of these processes as well as any sort of basic instinctive drive (sex and
hunger) that determine in some way our mental representations.
28
Notas Unidad 1
Pars, Luis
(16) a. El nio entr a su dormitorio.
b. The kid walked into his bedroom.
The tendency in Spanish is to have lexical semantic structures that focus on results, that is, they generate telic
verbs -like entrar or salir- that denote Events. In contrast, the set of verbs that describe Activities (in particular,
Means of Motion) in English is richer and, hence, they use these kind of verbs more often than we do in Spanish to
describe the same visual situation. Indeed, English speakers are required to express Means of Motion to get a
colloquial version of entrar (enter is a non-colloquial latinate). In general, its frequent and colloquial to describe
motion events with a closed Path with sentences that include Means of Motion verbs John walked to his house; John
walked home) whereas in Spanish they are possible if Means of Motion is the focus, the foregrounded and salient
information (Juan camin a/hasta su casa), otherwise, we just say John fue a su casa. Hence, typically, the Spanish
lexicon is not so subtle as its English counterpart in codifying Means of Motion information or, more generally,
specifying information about Activities. In a nutshell, we may say that the Means of Motion information is lexically
backgrounded in Spanish, which means that is not typically specified, it remains vague. In contrast, it is lexically
foregrounded in English.
The content communicated is, however, roughly the same in (16a) and (16b). How is this possible? The idea is that
(16a) is pragmatically enriched with the same information that (16b) carries lexically. In Spanish we use a
conversational implicature Q2 that adds the Means of Motion information. The premises also include one that directs
us to background knowledge and typicality: people usually walk into their bedrooms. Q2 order me to say the
minimum. It would be redundant to specify Means of Motion if its the usual way things are carried out.
Linguistic systems differ themselves in the functional weight put by design on their different parts. However, they
tend -to certain extent- to allow speakers to perform the same extra-linguistic actions. This is so because each system
balance itself in such a way that, for example, the contribution that is not made by the lexicon is made by pragmatics.
This is only a tendency toward balancing the overall system; however, even after considering the balancing effect,
some languages may allow results that aren`t possible in another, as we will verify in this course. In sum, languages
tend to allow speakers to perform the same extralinguistic functions. However, they may reach that goal in different
ways and to different degrees. In different ways means that they represent information in differently (implicitly or
explicitly, for example).
The distribution of information weight over different parts of the system -or, if you like a process oriented
metaphor, the division of labor among parts- reflects a particular organization. I would like to call this organization, a
particular logic. We have seen that English and Spanish talk about the spatial event differently. This means, each
system made their speakers pay attention to different portion of an event: result in Spanish, Manner in English. In this
sense, if languages govern attention, they determine a way of thinking and reasoning, a particular logic. In Spanish,
Manner information tends to be inferred, its implicit and requires the use of categories with prototypical effects.
English is plainly explicit about Manner from the lexicon (lexical semantics of verbs) whereas it offers a syntactic
construction to express result (a construction that doesn`t exist in Spanish because it doesn`t need a balancing effect).
(16) c John wiped the table clean.
Fred watered the plants flat.
The pond froze solid.
Harry coughed himself into insensibility.
The effect is salient (focal) in this construction as well as Manner is when using the Spanish Gerund Construction to
express Manner.
29
Notas Unidad 1
Pars, Luis
(16) d. Pedro sali de su casa corriendo.
Its the way he did it that is the salient and informative piece of assertion. It wasnt expected, he usually get out from
home by walking.
We don`t have resultative in Spanish. We do have though Secondary Predicate Construction.
(17) Los nios llegaron a casa cansados/ volvieron de la excursin felices.
English also has depictive predication:
(18) Mary brought the kid back home exhausted.
So the absence of the Resultative Construction in Spanish can`t be attributed to the lack of the template, it`s a
semantic fact.
Chinese in the middle between Spanish and English
(1)
Haizi ba chuanghu da po le.
Nio BA ventana golpear romper LE.
El nio rompi la ventana.
b. Feng chui dao le da shu.

Viento volar caer-(hacia) abajo LE grande rbol.
El viento hizo caer un rbol grande volando.
Zhangsan ku xing le.

Zhangsan llorar despertar LE.
Se despert de tanto llorar.
Zhangsan ku xing le Lisi.

Zhangsan llorar despertar LE Lisi.
Lisi se despert POR el llanto de Zhangsan
Xuesheng-men rao zhe caochang pao.

Estudiante-PL (moverse) en crculos ZHE cancha correr.
Los estudiantes corran en crculos en el cancha de deportes.
Mifeng fei j jin le houyuan.

Abeja(s) volar entrar LE patio
Las abejas entraron volando al patio
Lao-Zhang pao jin le houyuan.

Viejo-Zhang correr entrar LE patio.
El viejo Zahng entr corriendo al patio
Another fact that support the idea of a Spanish Lexicon prone to static representations whereas the English one is
prone to Activities: Deverbal nouns and denominal verbs.
The thesis is that it`s easier (in the sense of morphosyntactic simplicity= zero derivation) to form a noun (static
representation) from a verb (dynamic representation) in Spanish and its easier to form a verb from a noun in English.
30
Notas Unidad 1
Pars, Luis
V N Spanish
Caminar el caminar el lento caminar del cosechador
El salir,
El comer .
English
Smoke
Poss-ing Ernies smoking cigars bothers his mother.

PRO-ing Smoking cigars is fun.
Acc-ing Ernie smoking cigars bothered his mother.
Ing-of Ernies smoking of the cigar bothered his mother.
SOME OF THE USES OF -ing

a. Present Participle The boy cutting the flowers
b. Adjective A very cutting remark
N V
Spanish
Crcel encarcelar
Botella embotellar
Bolsa embolsar
Enligsh
(32) The cowboy corralled the horses yesterday.
The clerk boxed my toys before I could say anything.
The police jailed the burglars.
The hunter trapped the fox we had been looking for.
(33) You have to stamp that envelop.
(30) Mary wallpapered her bedroom.
(31) I buttered my toast.
Box
aluminum, arch, arm, asphalt, bait, bandage, bar, begrime, blanket, blindfold,
board, bread, brick, , butter, carpet, caulk, chrome, (#chromium), cloak, clothe, cloud, color, coat,
31
Notas Unidad 1
Pars, Luis
cork, crown, curtain, diaper, ditch, dot, drug, fence, flag, flour, forest, frame, fuel, gas.
archive, bag, bank, bed, bench, bottle, box, cage, can, case, cellar, coop, corral, crate, ditch,
The hypothesis of the class is that in every domain that we can contrast, each language may have a different kind
of logic, a different way of thinking (organizing representations) on this domain, a particular selection of elements
speakers should pay attention to in the extralinguistic world.
Slobin (1994, 2006, 2010) has been maintaining that language determine the thinking for the speaking process,
not the thinking in general, which may not involve language at all. Is there any thinking process that lack linguistic
presence? Apparently, yes. We can think through images (visual but also tactile, kinetic, etc.) as artists do. However, my
personal position on that is that there is very little room for the non-linguistic thinking and, further, it takes place in a
little relevant domain. First, because most of the information we have is multimodal and it involves linguistic coding of
some sort. Now, once you have language, it takes the primacy in the comprehension process. It`s very simple, images
even visual ones- are extremely ambiguous and vague. They allow for different interpretations. Now, language is
comparably much more precise. It narrows down the interpretative possibilities from many to one. Second, most of the
information we have has been obtained thorough linguistic means. Think about the things you believe you know
about: our independence process, the Roman Empire, the moon and the solar system, the genes, the business of our
vice-president, etc. You lack any empirical access to those events whatsoever, you just have heard of them, that is, for
you they are really just narratives. Third, since ancient philosophy, it has been pondered that empowering effect of
language on our intellectual capabilities comes essentially from the fact that it allows to free from the real world of
objects (I don`t need to have the River Plate on my current visual field to talk about it). This cant be foregrounded
enough; in reality, language allows us to get free from the real world but even from images: I dont need to imagining
a running event in its full-fledge richness in order to process the word (and its meaning of course). Thus, thinking with
words is different from thinking with images. This is absolutely true and crucially relevant, but there is even more to
the significance of language in human experience. Language creates its own reality, a reality that we call culture, its
made just of linguistic objects. This is what we are going to address through Verbal Actions later on.
La representacin de eventos en la ditesis causativa
La morfosintaxis de la construccin de representaciones de eventos en espaol e ingls tiene otra diferencia

fundamental relacionable con el procedimiento usado en las respectivas construcciones compensatorias arriba
descritas. El espaol muestra una tendencia clara a codificar eventos complejos en el significado verbal, es decir,
eventos que contienen subeventos gramaticalizados. El caso tpico es el de los verbos causativos de cambio de estado
como derretir, congelar, podrir, cocinar, descomponer, hundir, agrandar, achicar, etc. y verbos psicolgicos
como molestar, enojar, preocupar, asustar, disgustar, aburrir, etc.
(23) El fro congel el agua del balde.
(24) El submarino hundi un barco.
Congelar en (23) refiere un evento causativo y, por lo tanto, se trata de una estructura bi-eventiva donde el
primer subevento involucra un Agente (el fro) que causa un cambio de estado en un Paciente (el agua). Se trata de un
Evento, en particular, una Realizacin puesto que es posible decir El fro congel el agua en una hora; esto implica,
adems, que el agua estuvo congelndose durante toda esa hora. Hundir es un evento causativo que entraa un
Agente que hace algo y esta accin inespecfica causa un cambio de lugar y, por lo tanto, de estado en un Paciente (el
barco). Se trata tambin de una Realizacin causativa ya que el verbo implica un cambio de estado final al trmino de
un proceso durativo (El submarino hundi un barco en dos minutos). En espaol el morfema se es aplicado a ambos
verbos y tiene como efecto semntico el recorte de una representacin bi-eventiva y causal que queda reducida a un
solo evento, el subevento consistente en un cambio de estado.
(25) El agua se congel.

32
Notas Unidad 1
Pars, Luis
(26) Un barco se hundi.
La oracin en (25) denota un Evento, en particular una Realizacin, que tiene como trmino un cambio de
estado sufrido por un Paciente (el agua) luego de un proceso durativo (el agua se congel en diez minutos entraa
que estuvo diez minutos congelndose. Por su parte, (26) denota un Evento donde un Paciente cambia de estado
luego de un proceso (un barco se hundi en cinco minutos) previo a alcanzar ese punto tlico de culminacin.
El espaol parte de un verbo con una morfologa simple (raz verbal+flexin temporal) que denota una
semntica compleja en particular, un Evento complejo constituido de dos subeventos causalmente relacionados y
luego mediante reglas lxicas se accede a una morfologa ms compleja (raz verbal+se+flexin temporal) que denota
un evento ms simple, es decir, un nico subevento. En sntesis, la forma ms simple en espaol se asocia con la
semntica ms compleja a la que descompone mediante una derivacin morfolgica. El ingls sigue un camino
opuesto como lo muestra el contraste entre (27a) y (27b) con (28a) y (29b), respectivamente.
(27) a. The water in the bucket froze.
b. The cold weather froze the water in the bucket.
(28) a. The ship sank.
b. The submarine sank the ship.
La forma morfolgicamente ms simple es raz+flexin temporal y denota la semntica ms simple, es decir,

la que consiste en un nico evento de cambio de estado como en (27a) y (28a). La semntica ms compleja (bi-
eventiva y causal) es denotada mediante un proceso de transitivizacin de los verbos en (27b) y (28b), es decir, un
proceso sintctico que constituye una forma ms compleja.
El lxico ingls parte de una semntica simple que se complejiza por medios sintcticos. La construccin de
representaciones de eventos es composicional. El espaol, por el contrario, es des-composicional o substractiva, el
lxico nos entrega un todo complejo que la derivacin morfolgica descompone en formas ms simples. La
construccin resultativa del ingls puede interpretarse como la composicin de un evento mayor mediante la sintaxis
a partir de una Actividad. Existe un paralelismo entre esta adicin de material semntico mediante procedimientos
sintcticos y el procedimiento -ya descrito- subyacente a CR. Inversamente, CGI en espaol consiste en la explicitacin
de una Actividad implcitamente ya contenida en el todo, una parte del evento ya introducido por el verbo principal.
Es decir, el verbo principal (por ejemplo, entrar) alude a todo el evento referido en (2) mientras que el gerundio
corriendo especifica una parte de ese evento, no suma un (sub)evento. El espaol, tanto en SGI como en la ditesis
causativa muestra que el punto de partida lxico es un todo semntico que luego descompone con la ayuda de
procedimientos morfosintcticos.
33

Unidad I - AC & Tertium Comparationis - Paris PDF

Uploaded by

Document Information

Original Title

Copyright

Available Formats

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Available Formats

Unidad I - AC & Tertium Comparationis - Paris PDF

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

Anlsisis Contrastivo 2015

1. Defining preliminary linguistic notions

Further, we build up social facts through

Language sound production sequence (temporal nature of

cognitive representation (sensation, perception, concepts, beliefs)

Reality physical (temporal, spatial,

Ontology: individuals, classes,

Social Reality biological society: mother, etc.

History and inheritance

2.1.1. Formal aspects of the lexicon:

b. Inflections (the set of morphemes that can combine with it):

Gerunds: Complement of perception verbs (I saw you mowing the lawn)

Noun (Smoking cheap cigars is dangerous)

Manner adverbial modifiers (She came home crying)

Participles (Present and Past):

Adjectival pples: I bought a used car.

She is a crying baby.

Noun is also a complex category, although much simpler than verb.

3.1. Structured meaning

3.2. Technical representations

Pat is a fool. be (Pat, [fool])

The cup is shattered. shattered (cup)

Kim is in the library. be-in (library, Kim)

Dana saw the picture. see (Dana, picture)

The children cried. do (children, [cry (children)])

Carl ate pizza. do (Carl, [eat (Carl, pizza)])

The window shattered. INGR shattered (window)

The balloon popped. INGR popped (balloon)

The snow melted. BECOME melted (snow)

Mary learned French. BECOME know (Mary, French)

Dana glimpsed the picture. SEML see_ (Dana, picture)

Mary coughed. SEML do_ (Mary, [cough_ (Mary)])

[do (dog, )] CAUSE [feel (boy, [afraid])]

Max melted the ice.

[do (Max, )] CAUSE [BECOME melted (ice)]

The cat popped the balloon.

[do (cat, )] CAUSE [INGR popped (balloon)]

Sam flashed the light.

[do (Sam, )] CAUSE [SEML do (light, [flash (light)])]

Felix bounced the ball.

[do (Felix, )] CAUSE [do (ball, [bounce (ball)])]

Mary fed the pizza to the child.

3.3. Grammatical tests.

a. State: [+ static], [ dynamic], [ telic], [ punctual]

Tests for Aktionsart classes

Criterion State Achiev Accomp Activity Active Accomp

STATE predicate (x) or (x, y)

ACTIVITY do (x, [predicate_ (x) or (x, y)])

ACHIEVEMENT INGR predicate (x) or (x, y), or

ACCOMPLISHMENT BECOME predicate (x) or (x, y), or

where , are logical structures of any type

Upset: Bill upset the teacher.

Mary got upset.

(1) *Gave the us tall a wonderful student lecture.

(2) The tall student gave us a wonderful lecture.

(3) That movie blew me away.

(4) The tall student talked too much.

The tall student talked too much

The consensus is that

(1d) A wonderful lecture was given by the tall student.

(6) do(x, talk(x))

(7) a. Qu dijo Pedro que Mara traa?

b. Qu quiere Pedro que Juan pinte?